Film
Gothic horror has stalked the big screen since the dawn of cinema. 1919’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari was followed by Nosferatu (1922), which gave us Universal’s 1930s Dracula and Frankenstein. As horror films become ever more graphic, the Gothic influence continues to mutate under directors such as David Cronenberg (The Fly, Spider) and Tim Burton, whose lifelong fascination with the Gothic is evident in all his films from Edward Scissorhands through Batman to Corpse Bride.
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Television
It’s almost impossible to commission a drama series in America these days without some Gothic undertone, or in the case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn series, laying it on with a trowel. Less literal-minded successors include Six Feet Under, though nothing has yet beaten David Lynch’s 1990s masterpiece, Twin Peaks.
Literature
Since 1765 and Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the Gothic has never been out of fashion in literature. Mervyn Peake’s postwar Gormenghast trilogy featured a vast, crumbling castle where murder took place in secret rooms and children were devoured by a satanic beast in the fiery basement (in this case, the cook). Angela Carter brought a Gothic touch to her magic realist novels and the current author Sarah Waters is known for her darkly thrilling tales set in Victorian England. The Gothic is particularly evident in her second novel, Affinity, set in a women’s prison.
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Art
To find the Gothic in contemporary art, a good place to start is with Turner Prize nominees. Glenn Brown, who was shortlisted in 2004, takes original works by artists from the surrealists to science-fiction illustrators and turns them into dark, mysterious paintings with more than a hint of black humour. And what could be more Gothic than F***ing Hell, by the 2003 nominees Jake and Dinos Chapman — 30,000 mutilated plastic soldiers arranged as a giant swastika?
Music
In classical music, Gothic went out with the 19th century — though Bartók’s 1911 Duke Bluebeard’s Castle is a notable exception. Pop music, however, has positively embraced it. Joy Division’s bleak sound was often called Gothic — an aura grimly enhanced by the suicide of the singer Ian Curtis. Bauhaus flaunted it — their first single was Bela Lugosi’s Dead in 1979 — and effectively launched the “Goth” movement alongside Siouxsie and the Banshees (they both protest to the contrary). It continues to cheer up the charts in such acts as fluffy-bunny-under-the-make-up Marilyn Manson.
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Youth culture
What makes a Goth? Black clothes, check. Preoccupation with the darker side of life, check. Unisex black make-up, check. Wearing of leather coat while being a vegetarian, check. Intimate knowledge of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, check. The name Goth comes not just from a tendency toward the Gothic but from the nickname bestowed upon the lead singer of the Goth band the Sex Gang Children: “Count Visigoth”. The Goth scene originated among people disillusioned with the commercialism of the New Romantics. A defining trait seems to be flat denial whenever accused of being a Goth.